My PhD combines some of the most fascinating things and places in the world: archaeology, Cuba and concentration camps. I see the amazing, terrible and exotic images flowing into people’s minds as I try to summarise my research.
I am about to submit my thesis on the Cuban war for independence (1895-1898), a period that is normally identified by scholars as the one that witnessed the invention of the concentration camp.
As usual, things are more complicated than they seem. I took some time to realise, for instance, that the term “concentration camp” turns out to be pretty useless when comparing the many ways in which people have been confined over the last century and a half.
My research challenges the clichés about what a concentration camp is, and looks at what archaeologists can do to understand how they worked. I apply something called landscape archaeology to study how Spanish colonial authorities fought the Cuban insurgency by controlling the local population.
They did this by first gathering hundreds of thousands of civilians into fortified towns and villages, and then using them to recolonise the devastated countryside. By the time the US intervened in Cuba, more than 150,000 of these reconcentrados (about 10% of the total population) had died of starvation and epidemic diseases, most of them women, children and the elderly. In Cuba they still refer to this episode as the (second) “Spanish genocide”.
Many people have established a direct connection between these measures and the Nazi extermination camps. That is a tempting link to make but, in fact, the Cuban case is conceptually much closer to the camps set up during the second Anglo-Boer War, or during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. They were designed to segregate civilians from guerrilla fighters at all costs.
Part of my job is to demonstrate that appearances can be deceptive. People can actually suffer bitter confinement in places that resemble lovely model villages.
My thesis focuses on Dimas, a small coastal village in western Cuba, in the Pinar del Río province. This is a region famous for its beautiful natural areas, like the Viñales Valley, and for producing the best tobacco leaf in the world. One would certainly not define modern-day Dimas as a vibrant or glamorous place, but it has charm and serenity in its isolation.
Lying far away from the main tourist circuits, and with less than 2,600 residents, the village survives nowadays as a modest community of fishermen and tobacco growers. But it was created 125 years ago as one of the main Spanish reconcentration camps in the area.
My research has brought me to Cuba several times, and it has changed the way I see the world. I still do not like rum, smoking cigars or going to the beach, but I know now what being a scholar really means: it means keeping on working at a pile of old books and maps, like my Cuban colleagues, even when they cannot afford a kilogram of potatoes or a new pair of shoes.
I have found passion in people trying to decipher and preserve the remains of their past, not even considering those that we take for granted such as getting a proper salary, being able to demonstrate academic impact, or paying attention to how many times you have been cited. I owe to my PhD the opportunity of having met these extraordinary people and being able to call them my friends.
I am now sure that getting to know yourself through this process is almost as important, if not more important, than passing your viva. After all the problems, nerves, satisfactions, misfortunes and adventures, we are all just tiny, insignificant human beings.
You can use your research to bring you closer to other human beings, or isolate yourself in a bubble of ambitions, insecurities, expectations and academic rhetoric. In the end, I love my PhD because it has made me a better person than I was.
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